On those days you feel your life is sorely lacking a little Cyberpunk, Leigh Whannell’s low budget science fiction revenge thriller Upgrade might help to fill that void.  At a cost of only $5 million, Upgrade proved that, when done right, science fiction can, like horror, be a low-cost genre capable of producing returns.

Upgrade is the story of Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green), a self-employed work for home mechanic that specializes in fixing classic cars. The future world depicted in Upgrade is not exactly a dystopia, but it does not come across a vast improvement on the present either. The increasing reliance on technology has increased unemployment, causing Grey be critical of the role technology has played in shaping society. The truth is that Grey would likely would be on the street himself had he not been married to Asha, whose ambition and experience has kept her climbing the ranks in the tech industry. Though they do not always agree, they have a good life; that is until their self-diving car is hacked and tracked down by a band of criminals who murder Asha and put a bullet in Grey, turning him into a quadriplegic.

Obviously, a film named Upgrade is not going to keep a character like Grey quadriplegic for long. Eventually, Grey is provided hope in a new untested neuro-technology named STEM. But STEM does more than simply allow Grey to regain control of his body, it also communicates with him and is a little too empathic about his desire for revenge. To morally complicate matters worse, Grey learns that if he gives control of his body over to STEM, he then can transform into a ruthless, violent killing machine. As the film progresses, we watch STEM act as an enabler for vigilantism, as Grey becomes increasingly more willing to hand over control of his body to the A.I. to satisfy his desire for revenge.

Had it been thirty minutes shorter, Upgrade could easily be mistaken for a lost Black Mirror episode, mind you one that required slightly a higher production value than most episodes. But Whannell draws on other sci-fi influences as well. For example, the thugs with shot gun arms could easily pass for the type of criminal underlings that occasionally showed up in Ghost in a Shell: Stand Alone Complex. (My favourite anime.) When Marshall-Green acts like STEM is in control, he takes inspiration from Schwarzenegger in The Terminator. And obviously, the cold, rational voice of STEM takes inspiration from HAL in 2001.

But Upgrade is also a Blumhouse Production, and Blumhouse is known for horror. (Prior to directing Upgrade, Leigh Whannell was best known as the writer of Saw and Insidious, and later, for being the writer/director of The Invisible Man.) As a seeming nod to Blumhouse fans, you can see Whannell’s horror roots in the horrific, graphic nature of the film’s violence and in Grey’s contorted face every time he tries to fight against his own body. This film is a body horror wet dream.

But at its heart, Upgrade is a revenge thriller that is made far more interesting by its Cyberpunk flourishes. I can admit, there are times the film’s low budget shows and the film ends in a way predictable to most thrillers. The story is also a lot less intellectual than some other recent low budget science fiction entries like Possessor. But Upgrade is much more fun and there were times when I was in awe of how far they were able to stretch the money they had. I have definitely seen near-futures depicted in higher budget films look far worse than this. And hey, I am always a sucker for Cyberpunk flourishes. Here’s hoping Upgrade kicks off a trend.